Archive for November, 2008

I took a stack of ATC’s or ACEO’s to trade at Make It University! in Houston at the Houston International Quilt Festival last month. I wanted to show what I brought home in exchange. Thank you to all the artist’s who traded cards. It was really fun to see the work and take home little pieces of your work! I’m thinking a lot about leaves right now, and there were lots of beautiful leafy pieces to enjoy.

This is my weekly journal quilt 44/52 2008, 6″ x 8″. Living in central Texas, I don’t get a lot of leaves! So when I went to visit Utah recently, I was wow-ed by the awesome colors and variety of leaves. I made some leaf rubbings with my niece, and then made this piece as well. I started with a plain piece of white muslin. I placed the leaves underneath and did a rubbing with my favorite watercolor pencils. I then did some more drawing on them and painted them with a wet brush. I added fun stitching to accentuate the veins with variegated threads. I added a back, zig-zagged the edges, and there you go.

This is my weekly journal quilt 43/52 2008, 6″ x 8″. I really like the effect of the painstiks better on this piece! However, I didn’t enjoy where this piece was going before the stitching was added. For this piece, I started with a background piece of a treasured scrap of Laura Wasilowski’s hand painted fabric. then I fused on white fabric skulls. Next, I used freezer paper templates and used oil paintstiks to make the face and flower details. I let this dry for a few days and then added the interfacing, back, and quilting stitches.

This is my weekly journal quilt 42/52 2008. It was a bit earlier in October when I created it, and I was feeling the Halloween love (I am posting late!) Anyway, I decided to experiment with both painstiks and freezer paper templates. I used a background cloth that I had already painted with leftover paints. We have bats under many of our bridges in Austin, so I decided to include those elements with either shapes made from freezer paper templates or by hand painting them. I didn’t like where it was going, so I kept working it, and it got overworked and it’s still too 2 dimensional. But, I learned things about working with the oil paintstiks and freezer paper templates, so it was a lesson. I think my final result of 43/52 is better, and I worked with similar materials and processes, so look for the post soon!